Equities Exchange Opens for Business in Second Life

by Alphaville Herald on 08/07/05 at 9:43 pm

First IPO is successful.

Today the Cyberland Equities Exchange opened for business, with an initial public offering of Cyberland — an in game land investment company. It is unclear at this point whether additional SL corporations will be allowed to join the exchange (the FAQ says no, but the discussion with Shaun Altman on the SL Forums seems more open to the idea).

The instructions on trading are very clear, and the interface is quite intuitive (very similar to the GOM interface), with buy and sell orders posted. It took me about 5 minutes to open my account and make my first purchase — 500 shares, woot! Screenshots of the interface and press release follow.


Opening an account requires linking it to your avatar at an atm

8 Responses to “Equities Exchange Opens for Business in Second Life”

  1. Shaun Altman

    Jul 8th, 2005

    Hi, thanks for the write-up! :) I just wanted to offer a little clarification on the topic of listing other companies besides Cyberland. I suppose that I should re-write that part of the FAQ to be a little clearer, but this is something that I definitely WANT to do!

    In fact, the infrastructure to support this is already in place. There are just some issues to overcome first, both in the area of trust and in just finding SL companies which which seem to make sense to IPO. Obviously the vast majority of SL companies don’t have any need for this type of funding.

    That said, I’m currently in discussions with four companies who seem to be good candidates for listing on the exchange. I don’t anticipate anything happening tomorrow, or next week, but I also don’t think it’s too far off. :)

    Long-term, I would definitely like to see is a diverse marketplace, both in the companies on the exchange and also in the types of investments possible.

    -Shaun

  2. Matthias

    Jul 8th, 2005

    Good luck with this, guys ;-)

    I personally just found out about this through the Herald, and have gotten quite interested in it. Let’s hope someone picks up my buy order soon!

  3. RB

    Jul 10th, 2005

    Is this anything like S(L)Exchange.com ??

    And yes it looks very similar to GOM.

    - RB.

  4. Urizenus

    Jul 10th, 2005

    RB, SL Exchange is more of a general marketplace. This is pretty much a pure stock exchange (albeit with only one corporation listed at the moment).

    Hey, maybe the Herald should go public too!

  5. RB

    Jul 10th, 2005

    I want in on the ground floor when you do the first IPO then. 1000′s should come from it, millions later on down the track. Herald investors become rich people. haha.

    - RB.

  6. Afraidto Bebanned

    Jul 10th, 2005

    This isn’t like GOM at all.

    The more you look into this scheme, the more you’ll realize that it’s probably a scam.

    One piece of wisdom from the SL forum:
    “Anyone who gives their money to an anonymous company run by an anonymous person is just .. well the biggest chump in the universe.”

    Amen to that

  7. Urizenus

    Jul 10th, 2005

    When I said it was like GOM I was talking about the buy/sell utility and the market tracking graphics etc. Could it be a scam? Well, I wouldn’t bet the farm on something like this, but it’s fun to take chances on these virtual businesses (and we are only talking about a couple bucks). In the worst case I learn about online scams. In the best case you get to meet some cool people (that’s how I met RB, for example).

  8. hey hey

    Jul 12th, 2005

    If this Cyberland land resale business is for real, then they could concievably raise enough capital to be on par with Anshe or any other land merchant. Anyone else a little worried?

Leave a Reply